At the core of being a writer is the writing. Everything else is secondary to that. So this is the most critical supporting goal you need to define.

Mark Twain said, “write what you know.” This makes sense. Your platform is based on your experiences. However, there is a danger to this as you might be too close to reality and not be able to achieve the suspension of disbelief that fiction requires.

What is your platform? What unique experiences have you had in your life? What could your publisher put on the back inside flap of your hardcover that would make readers think you knew something about what you are writing?

Write what you want to know. My friend Elizabeth George writes literary British mysteries. She was a schoolteacher in Orange County, CA. But she traveled to England and became fascinated with it, particularly the class structure. So she invented two characters, one a handsome rich nobleman, the other a plain, lower class woman and teamed them together as detectives.

Write what you are passionate about. Study writers. Some writers focus on a specific locale that they are passionate about: Dennis Lehane and Boston; Michael Connelly and LA. Others a specific topic: Stephen Pressfield and ancient battles. Others a specific character: Sue Grafton and Kinsey Milhone.

Write to fulfill a need. Sometimes you just have to say something. Be careful, though. Make sure you aren’t lecturing the reader. The primary reason people read fiction is for entertainment. So what makes a consumer want to read it? How does your story connect emotionally with the reader?

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.” Virginia Woolf.

This is a FEAR many writers have. They feel they are revealing too much of themselves in their writing and exposing themselves to the world.

You are.

But don’t sweat it. How many authors would you recognize if you saw them?

And even if you put your mother in the book as a character, it’s probably not a problem because:

You have to write the book.

You have to sell the book.

Your mother has to read the book.

Your mother has to recognize herself in the book. Most won’t.

People are going to know things about you from what you write. You can’t let that inhibit you. Remember, you always have the excuse it’s fiction. I start many of my presentations by reminding people I’m a professional liar. I get paid to make things up.

No matter what, once you are published, someone is not going to like what you wrote. And they will feel it’s their solemn duty to let you know that. It’s part of the job.

Out of every 100 emails I get about my books, 99 are nice. That 1 that isn’t used to really bum me out until I adjusted my attitude. Now I do the following:

If it’s nasty email (not a thoughtful critical one), I immediately stop reading and hit delete. I don’t need to pollute my mind with such thoughts. Then I smile and think, that book really must have affected that person to get them so angry. I’d rather have anger, than apathy.

A question that always comes up at conferences is: “What’s hot?”

The answer: Who cares?

I’m not saying you should ignore the market. Indeed, you have to study and follow the market, because it’s the business and it’s important to profile your readers so you know how to best reach them when your book is published. However, there is such a time-lag in publishing that what’s hot now, might not be hot three years from now (year to write book, year to sell it, year in production).

That timeline is changing, but so far, not that much for traditional publishers. For self-publishers, we can have a book up in a day on electronic platforms. But I doubt you can write a book in a day based on what’s hot.

Writing about something you don’t care about, but are doing it simply to try to ride the latest vampire/steampunk/lawyer/serial killer wave, will show up in the writing.

You don’t control the market. Sometimes you hit things at the right times, sometimes you aren’t lucky. I wrote a suspense novel (Bodyguard of Lies) with two female leads: one an assassin, the other a housewife. I received little interest in it during the 90s. Now female leads in a thriller are hot.

My vampire book (Area 51 Nosferatu) came out before vampires were hot.

I recently wrote historical fiction with the first book covering 1840 until the battle of Shiloh in the Civil War (DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY, a Novel of West Point & the Civil War). I was working on it for a while before someone pointed out to me that 2011 is the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War. That was just a coincidence. I wrote that book because I’m passionate about the subject matter and the people involved.

To be successful, you are going to have to break some rules. If you do the same as everyone else, you’re the same as everyone else. In Special Forces our unofficial motto was If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

But beware you don’t break the three rules of Rule Breaking:

The paradoxical rules of rule breaking.

1. Know the rule (breaking a rule because you don’t know or understand it, is just being dumb)

2. Have a good reason for breaking the rule (I ask WHY a lot in my workshops. I don’t believe there are any rules of writing—you just need a good reason why you are doing something)

3. Accept the consequences of breaking the rule (if it worked, you’re a genius. If it didn’t, figure out what went wrong, reboot and restart)

A Career Plan

A while ago I asked Susan Wiggs for some career advice. We’d taught together for seven straight years at the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference. She also lives one island south of me. I noticed the other day while driving through the rain, and then when I looked south, the sun was shining on her island for some reason. A conspiracy perhaps.

Anyway, she emailed me back within 20 minutes of my query with a very detailed explanation of the route she followed for success.

First, Susan said she studied successful authors in her genre. This is the author dissection we discussed earlier. She looked for the patterns.

Second, what she came up with was a plan to write three books. Since they were romances, she couldn’t use the same protagonist in every book; so she looked at a unifying concept. She decided on a fictional town. Suzanne Brockman uses a Navy SEAL team. This gives reader continuity. I’m using West Point as my unifying concept in my current series.

Third, you need a unifying theme. In romance, well, it’s usually some form of romance. I’m using the theme of loyalty versus honor. I’m applying that theme on two levels: personal for the characters; and also in the big picture because my focus is on the Civil War.

Fourth, the goal is then to sell the heck out of the first book and get a commitment from the publisher to push the numbers on the three books. Now that is out of your control. Both Susan and I have experienced publishers that didn’t push a series.

I think though, if you approach agents and publishers with a plan, you have a much better success of the plan working than not having a plan.

In fact, I was on an agent panel at Pacific Northwest Writers (no idea why I was on panel—guess because my agent was sitting next to me). And I mentioned the idea of having a plan. After the panel was over, one of the agents told me in all the years he’d been agenting, no one had ever approached him with a plan. He said he’d love it if writers had one.

I think that is the Catch-22 that a lot of agents and editors can’t get past, they would love a new author to have a plan, but they don’t have the time or energy to teach you how to develop one. So we’re still working on the throw 100 new books against the wall and hope 1 sticks paradigm. I really think we need to get smarter.

This is the final part of my dialogue regarding the state of publishing with Randy Ingermanson. This is a timely discussion, not just because its coming on the tail end of Digital Book World Conference, or even the current state of publishing, but my own publishing company’s recent review of the last year, which has led us to make a few changes. I’ve touched on a few in this interview, but even since then, as we’ve watched what is going on around us in the world of publishing, we’ve made adjustments. We are already seeing some excellent results for efforts. Next week we’ll post about some of the changes Who Dares Wins Publishing is making and what you can expect from us in the future.

Randy: Part of the publishers’ problem is that contracts written more than 10 years ago don’t really cover e-books. Books published in the last few years will never go out of print now, because of e-books. Unless you put clauses in the contract to redefine what out of print means.

Bob: There are clauses being built in on that. RH says less than 300 sold in two reporting periods, which is pretty low.

Randy: I think it has to go up to 50%, which is still low compared to 70% or 90%, but most authors would be willing to take that to avoid the work. But 25% seems unfair to most authors.

Bob: Yes. We offer 50% right now. It’s currently higher than pretty much everywhere else.

Randy: This is a time of chaos for publishing.

Bob: Yes. And the key is to stay on top of all the latest information and try to sift through it all.

Randy: Right, things change every month.

Bob: Reading blogs, things like your newsletter, PW, going to conferences. It’s all key. Twitter is a good information source. I hit probably five or six links from people who have good information every day to stay updated.

Randy: One thing that’s changing is the required lengths of books.

Bob: Yes. We’re focusing soon on shorts. 10-15 thousand words at $2.99. And, on the other end, it doesn’t cost any more to do a 170,000 words book.

Randy: The nice thing is that you could write a 10k book in a week.

Bob: Or pull it together from a bunch of blog posts.

Randy: Whereas most authors would be stressed to do a 100k book in a month.

Bob: Yes. I’m getting some experts to put together shorts on their particular fields.

Randy: And as you say, books that were formerly too long (more than 150k or so) can be done economically. It only adds a few cents to the Amazon cost to the author to do a really long book. I think they charge the author about 5 cents in delivery fees for a normal sized book.

Bob: Yes. The other interesting thing is going to be enhanced ebooks. We’re not sure how that’s going to work, but we’re playing with it.

Bob: Readers read. That’s why I’m not a fan of film trailers for books. Different medium.

Randy: The thing with video is that it requires really good production values or it looks hokey. I don’t like them either. I looked at trailers for a while and found that I was unimpressed with every trailer I’d seen. And a 3 minute video feels like forever. I’d rather have text so I can skim.

Bob: Exactly. I used to have video of my presentations, but dropped it because the quality wasn’t good enough. And, interestingly, people would rather listen to than watch something. That’s another area where we get income: MP3 downloads of my workshops. We’re on iTunes with that. We also sell MP3 direct. Just got an order as we’ve been talking for my Warrior Writer presentation.

Randy: Audio has high value to the customer. They can put it on an iPod and listen on the commute or in the gym. I’ve been selling MP3 direct on my site for a long time because it’s a great deal for customers and therefore a great deal for me.

Bob: Yes. It’s one of those things that took a little while to perfect, but we’ve got it down now.

Randy: What are your thoughts on podcasting books in segments?

Bob: I don’t know about podcasts. We’ve been discussing them, but it’s a big investment in time. So it’s on our “to look at” list.

Randy: It’s something I’d love to try for promoting my novels.

Bob: One thing we thought of yesterday was a free eBook with excerpts from all our books. A sampler. So that will be done before the end of the month

Randy: That would be cool. People tend to be quick to download free, but not so quick to consume it.

Bob: Yes. But it only costs us the time to put it together. It’s hard to tell what works and what doesn’t as far as promotion.

Randy: One thing I think might be cool would be an “omnibus” version of a series — get them all in one big e-book at a price that’s much better than buying them one by one. It could work for a complete series. Not so much for a series in progress.

Bob: Good idea. I think we’ll try that for my Atlantis series. Have six books in it. Pull them all together at a discount. (We’ve already done this since the interview and bundled all six books for the price of four. Also, we cut prices on all our fiction 50%, just this week).

Randy: Joe Konrath mentioned this idea on his blog a few months ago and I’ve been itching to try it.

Bob: That’s the great thing about eBooks — you can do things fast.

Randy: Right, once you’re past the learning curve. I think you’d need to price it so that it’s still a good deal if people have bought one or two books. So it needs to be a deep discount. That’s my hunch. One last thing before we break — how important is POD for an author going the e-book route?

Bob: I don’t think it’s that important, unless you have a following or are doing non-fiction. We put non-fiction on LSI right away. For fiction, we do a couple a month as they get traction in eBook to keep our overhead reasonable.

Randy: Makes sense to me. LSI is Lightning Source, right?

Bob: Yes. The good thing is you can also sell via LSI in the UK. And it’s expanding to Australia this year.

Randy: When you say “overhead” you’re referring to the cost of typesetting, correct?

Bob: Set up costs. Plus, formatting takes quite a while for the POD book. That was a steep learning curve. You only get two shots at upload or they charge extra.

Randy: Gack! What are the setup costs for Lightning Source?

Bob: $75 initially and then another $20 charge for something else. Not too bad. But when you’re doing a lot of titles, it adds up.

Randy: Right. Plus the time to do it. And time is money.

Bob: Time is the key for that.

Randy: OK, we’ve covered a huge amount in the last hour. Anything to add?

Bob: Just reiterate that it’s a great time to be a writer, but the most important thing is to have great content.

Bookends Literary Agency has announced that they’re built an ePublisher-sort of. In an effort to keep up with the fast changes of the publishing landscape they’ve built Beyond The Page Publishing to help their authors who wish to self-publish electronically.

Jessica Faust on the BookEnds Blog“One of the things I’ve always said is that there is no universal way to be a great agent. Each client is an individual and each career needs to be approached differently. I feel the same about self-epublishing. In looking at what we could offer our clients, there wasn’t one universal path that would fit every client and every need. So after much talk and consideration, BookEnds is taking a variety of approaches to self-epublishing in the hope that we can continue to provide the best opportunities for our clients.”

Dystel & Goderich have announced that they’re going to expand their reach and that of their authors by keeping up with the times…in other words, they’re going to help those of their authors who choose to self-publish with the work that goes into it.

From the D&G blog“what we are going to do is to facilitate e-publishing for those of our clients who decide that they want to go this route, after consultation and strategizing about whether they should try traditional publishing first or perhaps simply set aside the current book and move on to the next. We will charge a 15% commission for our services in helping them project manage everything from choosing a cover artist to working with a copyeditor to uploading their work. We will continue to negotiate all agreements that may ensue as a result of e-publishing, try to place subsidiary rights where applicable, collect monies and review statements to make sure the author is being paid. In short, we will continue to be agents and do the myriad things that agents do.

Our intention is to keep on trying to find books we think we can sell to traditional publishing houses, to negotiate the best deal (always), and to give our authors as many options as we can. Because we will continue to be commission-based, we will not be automatically pushing authors into e-publishing. Again, we want to give our authors options and empower them to do what they set out to do all along: have their work read by the largest possible audience.”

Personally, I think it’s great to see agents finding ways to continue to help build their authors. What do you think?

EDITED TO ADD:
Maybe because my experience with an agent has taught me to never completely trust that agent is fighting to get me the best deal they could without some pushing and stubbornness on my own part. I just read a long open letter to agents on Courtney Milan’s blog that I think explains the whole conflict of interest angle to me. Which I admit I didn;t really get before, because in my mind I never completely trust anyone to get me the best deal or look out for me the way *I* should be looking out for myself. It’s a post worth reading on this subject.

Bob: We started it to get my backlist out in eBook and POD. Once we went through our learning curve, we realized we could expand and have slowly been doing that. Taking on other writers.

Randy: How does your acquisition process work?

Bob: Right now, it’s mainly authors who have rights to their backlist. Most authors think they can do it themselves, but it’s not as easy as it appears.

Randy: No kidding. There is a learning curve on the formatting of an e-book. And most e-books need cover art because they can’t use their old covers from the original book.

Bob: And we’ve done a book that needed to be out right away on social media for writers. A traditional publisher would have taken a year to get it out, which would have made it obsolete. Cover art requires an expensive program and expertise. Has to pop in thumbnail.

Randy: Meaning that a 100 x 150 pixel cover is a whole different game from a 600 x 900 pixel cover.

Bob: Yes. Simple is better. Contrast is important.

Randy: But on the plus side, the cover will appear in RGB format, not CMYK. Which means that certain colors that simply can’t be done on a paper cover will work on electronic media.

Bob: We just did a blog on cover art and some things we learned. We’re still learning. Also there are six different eBook formats right now, so that’s a lot of work.

Randy: Do you automate the process of putting out all the formats? SmashWords uses their “meat grinder” technology to produce them all from one Word file.

Bob: Right now, the other half of my company, Jen Talty, does all that.

Randy: The 70% Amazon royalty is huge for authors. That makes the game reasonable.

Bob: What no one talks about is 100% royalty.

Randy: Meaning?

Bob: We’ve formatted all our books for the various devices. When someone buys an eBook directly from our web site, we don’t have a middle man.

Randy: Right, but you still have credit card charges, which amount to about 14% of the price on a $2.99 book. Roughly.

Bob: We use Paypal right now, and I think their % is under 5%. And we’re uploading a new web site this week that will take credit cards directly and allow people to store their information securely on the site.

Randy: It is, but they also charge a $.30 base fee, which is about 10% on a $2.99 book. Both PayPal and credit card charges work out about the same, when all is said and done. I love PayPal, by the way. But on small ticket sales, there’s a hefty fee as a percentage of the sale.

Bob: Yes. Still, a 90% royalty is very nice.

Randy: Yes, it’s much better than 8% from a major publisher. Which gets paid 9 months after the purchase. With a percentage held back for fear of returns.

Bob: Yes. I earn more in one month from a book we publish than six months from my traditional royalties.

Randy: I’m not surprised. Speaking of returns, do you think the industry is going to change the return policy in the future? I’m astonished that it’s still in place.

Bob: Yes. Because Print On Demand is the future. Once the price point on the Espresso Machine gets low enough, they’ll be no more shipping of books to bookstores. They’ll be printed right there. We use POD to supplement our eBook sales. We find that for non-fiction, readers often want the physical book.

Randy: I agree. For fiction, I always get the e-book now. But for nonfiction reference books, I still like paper. You don’t think brick and mortar bookstores will die, do you?

Bob: Sadly, I think brick and mortars will die. They already are. Unless they specialize. Do what Starbucks is doing. The trend is to go local. Local authors, local books. Hold more events. Use the Espresso Machine as an income source by letting people print their own books right there.

Randy: But local has the disadvantage that it doesn’t scale. An author can only be in one place at a time. Whereas the web never sleeps.

Bob: True. And with social media an author has a much greater reach than ever before. I think it’s an exciting time to be an author.

Randy: It’s a GREAT time to be an author. You’ve got a book out on social media correct? By one of your authors?

Bob: We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media by Kristen Lamb. What’s key about her book is she focuses on content BEFORE worrying about getting on social media. Most authors are using social media poorly without a plan. For example, authors using their book cover or their pet as an avatar is wrong. Unless they’re only going to write one book or sell their pet.

Randy: A lot of authors try to just promote themselves, rather than promoting ideas. Content is still king.

Bob: Content is King. But I’ve had to accept promotion is Queen.

Randy: Promotion is a whole lot easier when there’s content to back it up.

For the last 6 months or so I’ve been helping a friend begin her writing career. It’s been a bit of a difficult process because I have no idea how to answer the “How do you write?” question. Helping her has made me realize how much I do know, and how little I know. A lot of how *I* write is natural. I’ve read some craft books and taken some workshops, but if I were to be honest I’d have to admit that it’s rare for me to take anything I hear in these things and translate them to how I actually work.

It’s become clear to me over the years that I, personally, get more from workshops and books that aim to help encourage creativity and productivity more than craft and structure. That doesn’t mean I don’t take craft workshops, because I DO learn from them. It’s just that what I learn might not work for me the way I’d like it to. With this is mind I’ve encouraged my friend to take an online workshop on plotting. Since I’m not much on plotting I had a hard time trying to explain to her how it was done. Plus, I figure any exposure to craft lessons is good, because that’s how you discover your own process- by trial and error.

So, what has she learned so far in that workshop? “It looks like everyone is there to socialize, and not to learn,” she says. Which is very frustrating for me because I’d been lecturing her on taking her writing seriously. Talking about how it’s not all fun, and creating, but that there is work involved too…like plotting, editing, revising, promoting.

I took that chance to ask her how many people in that workshop were published, and did she note that the people who were talking a lot, and socializing so much were the unpublished writers, and not the published ones so much? Uhmm yeah.

Then I saw this quote on twitter….

“A lot of people talk about writing. The secret is to write, not talk.”
- Jackie Collins

That sort of says it all doesn’t it?

Yes, writing can be very solitary, and yes isn’t it wonderful that the internet allows us to connect with others that are in the same boat as we are-no matter what boat that is. But what it also does is give a false sense of security. It allows people to sit at a desk in front of a computer and feel like they are working when really, they aren’t.

This is why some of us can look at the clock and think “Shit, I spent 12 hours on the computer today, and I only have 3 pages written.”

Yes, there is other work beside the actual writing, but let’s be honest. We’ve all been the victim of some internet time suck like Facebook, twittter, blog hopping or even youtube! That’s not to say we don’t intend to work. I know I’ve been researching something at times only to get distracted by other youtube videos, or links on a website that lead to pictures of hot naked men. Okay, so that last one might just be me, but you get what I’m saying, right?

Basically, if you want to be a writer….then make it a priority to actually write.

Instead of inventing from scratch or using people you know, you can use templates that professionals have developed. There are three ones I suggest considering: Profiling; Archetypes; Myers-Briggs.

Profiling: Was invented by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit to track serial killers. They went and interview every living serial killer in jail and recorded their traits and started seeing patterns. I book I recommend is John Douglas’s MINDHUNTER where he describes how they did this.

The key is that you can profile anyone, including your characters, particularly your protagonist and antagonist. Remember, 99% of what people do is habit. Now habit can be very boring and you rarely put it in the book (ever notice the day to day things that characters never seem to do in a novel?). But by knowing your characters’ profile, you can begin to predict their behavior so they’ll act ‘naturally’. Habits are behavior patterns.

Profilers examine results and work backward, much like an author might want characters to do certain things, so we see what results we want, and develop a character that will give us those results. This is one way to develop characters, especially if you are writing a story where the plot might be bigger than the characters such as a thriller.

Some things you might play with: What is your protagonist’s profile for a normal day? What is your antagonist’s profile for a norm day?

Archetypes– Gender Differences

I find archetypes useful for looking at gender differences. The same types of person are listed side by side, but notice how they have different labels. There is a difference between men and women and you can use this to your advantage as a writer.

Female Male

Boss Chief

Seductress Bad boy

Spunky kid Best friend

Free spirit Charmer

Waif Lost soul

Librarian Professor

Crusader Swashbuckler

Nurturer Warrior

Myers-Briggs

Many of you have probably taken the Myers-Briggs. It was developed in 1943 during World War II when there was a need to slot people in certain jobs that fit them. It’s not a test, but an indicator, so there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ labels.

There are four areas, with two possible orientations to each, equaling 16 character ‘types’. So this gives you a broad range of characters to put in your novel.